


The Time-Traveler's Kismesis: Counterthesis (The Troll Out Of Time Remix)

by kismetNemesis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Ladystuck, Ladystuck Remix 2016, Past Abuse, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 11:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7572568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kismetNemesis/pseuds/kismetNemesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meetings between the Demoness and her kismesis, the Dolorosa, who refuses to give up hope in a world the Demoness knows is doomed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time-Traveler's Kismesis: Counterthesis (The Troll Out Of Time Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Time-Traveler's Kismesis: Counterthesis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220354) by [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer). 



"This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the midpoint, to which everything ran, before, and _from_ which everything will run. But now, my kismesis, we are here, we are _now_ , and those other times are running elsewhere."

-Troll A. S. Byatt

-

How does it feel?

It feels the way it always has. You do not know how old you are now, only that it has been eons since you were a wriggler and it will be eons before you are allowed to die. You know only your tasks, how to turn the gray marble of the planet just so it faces the right light, the right stars, the right time. The wrong time.

It feels that though time is not your master, you still must bow to the master of time.

But she bows to no one.

You saw her the first time carrying that bomb of causality, leaking significance, probability, and various wriggler excrements. The Signless, not yet the Signless nor the Sufferer, but for now a stolen grub clutched in the arms of an escaped nun. He is very red against his guardian’s robes.

He is what drew you here, to his first day on the surface, so you at first do not pay mind to how the Dolorosa watches you. Like as not she will think you are a daymare walking the night- which, to be fair, you are.

“I took your advice,” she tells you. Not much surprises you anymore, but this particular curl of fate is new to you. You know how this woman dies, but not how she knows you. You raise one eyebrow, hoping she will elaborate and make your job, the job of reciting your lines as if you are an actor in a play of your own cursed life, easier.

“You said that I was a coward.” This barb of yours is unusually sharp. What will inspire you to such hatred?

“You said that I didn't truly believe in freedom and choices because I didn't fight when I was sent to the brooding caverns,” she continues. “You said that nothing I did would change anything anyway, no matter how many weak grubs I coddled. You said that if I ever had a chance to save someone, I would be too weak to make a difference. Well, you were wrong. I'm not a coward, I did save this grub, and I am going to make a difference.” She is breathing heavily, clutching the grub at her chest tighter than strictly necessary. It irks you, all this needless passion. 

But you can see what you did. A child’s trick, to tell her she can’t do something to get her to do it. She cannot know that her rebellion is just one more piece of fate’s puzzle. 

“I'm going to change this world until it's more than Death's playground, and you can't stop me.” Defiant, beautiful, young, full of hope. The thing is that you can’t stop her, any more than you can stop anything. This universe is immutable and untouchable from the moment it sprang to life to the moment it will die, in the years of your wigglerhood. You can’t stop her, you can’t change anything, she can’t change anything, and it is Death’s playground. Every moment of it belongs to him. _He is already here_ , and you want to make her see that. 

“I won't lie on the night I tell you those things, Porrim Maryam, forsworn grubwarden of the Bluevale Caverns. Nothing you try will ever unseat my Master from his throne. Your life was futile before it began. If you refuse to see this truth, you are blind. All your sorrow will spend to silence, and I will spit upon your grave.” You give her your best smile, the next best thing to biting her. She doesn’t flinch, meets you fang for fang.

“I will prove you wrong. And when I win, you won't have a Master. The only grave will be his own.” 

The worst thing about this is how much you want it to be true.

You can’t take it any more. You slip away into another night at random, hoping she takes it as a dismissal instead of a retreat. Hoping? Since when do you care about the reactions of those long doomed? Since when do you... care?

You find yourself at her grave. Your bloodpusher races.

If time is writ- and you know it is- then these feelings are writ, too. You may as well follow them. She is over and gone, you know she is buried here, her hopes burned with her son. But she is still out there fighting. She could be fighting with you.

Her life is short and bright, and yours is long and dim. You may as well see where they connect. 

-

The first time you kiss her she kisses you like you have been quadranted for years, like she knows your hate as well as she knows the shape of her own horns. You both draw blood. 

She is old, at this point, older than she was anyways. You suppose that’s true for all trolls, eventually. Her son is not yet dead but he is also no longer a young troll poised on the edge of revolution. He pretends not to be tired, but you know the truth.

Your claws rip long trails in her robes. She is not tired. She has not lost hope. You came here towards the end to see if she ever doubted, even for a moment, her cause. To see if you could catch her in a moment where the universe’s true face was revealed to her.

The only thing being revealed to her is your body. She is leaving lipstick marks on your chest, you are leaving jade green welling up on her hips. Who does she wear lipstick for, at this point? 

“Why do you always wear that uniform?” she asks you. “I could make you something better.”

“I very much doubt that,” you sneer, but the answer is the same as the answer to all questions: because you have no choice.

-

After the first successful rally of the Signless, she’d stumbled back to her tent giddy and grinning. You waited for her.

“It’s working!” She pointed one claw at you. “It’s working. You say the cause is doomed, but we touched so many lives tonight.”

“You led so many to join a suicide mission.”

“There is risk involved,” she concedes, “but there is risk in being a lowblood in this civilization of ours. There is risk in going outside at night, but how else would you see the stars?”

“Her Condescension owns the stars.” That makes her face fall a little, and you revel in the small victory. She grabs you by the throat and you grab her by the horns.

“But she doesn’t own me.” She’s right. No one owns her.

-

Even when she is a slave to Mindfang, no one owns her.

“You were wrong,” she says when she looks up from where she is swabbing the deck and sees you standing. “I haven’t given up.”

You know you do not need to reiterate her situation to her, so you just stare. She is bruised, and not from your loathing hands. She is on her knees, and yet.

“I may never be free again. But I did something. Just because the best times are in the past doesn’t mean they’re gone. You should know that better than anyone. Don’t frown at me, Demoness. I know time means nothing to you. So you could go see me when I was younger. Right? I’m still out there.” You can’t tell if she’s trembling from passion or from anger or if she’s finally fragile.

“That is what gives you hope, Maryam? That I can be witness to your forgotten glories? I am the witness to all time, Dolorosa, I am the one who was and is and always will be bound to destroy you and all you fight for.”

“You don’t get it.” She still shakes. “It doesn’t matter that things are over. It matters that they happened.” 

“Nothing matters.”

“You matter,” she insists, and this time she goes still. “You matter, Damara.” You recoil. You don’t know when you told her your name. You don’t know the last time you weren’t Handmaid, weren’t Demoness, weren’t “you there, girl.”

She goes on scrubbing as if she had said nothing. You hate her. You hate her so much.

You go to a time before she was born, and you try for a century or so to forget what it is like to be a person with a name.

-

The first kiss for her is your last kiss ever.

Impossibly, motherfucking miraculously, your time is coming to an end. You do not have any sort of guide of the times you appear in history, but at this point you know they are dwindling. You have seen the moment of your death, when Meenah Peixes in her hubris will take on your curse. 

All hourglasses run out eventually, especially if someone stabs them with a trident. 

It has been less than a sweep since she escaped with the wriggler, and she is just getting into the swing of life on the run. The whole world is new to her, and she reacts to everything so- so much. Still, it gratifies you when she stifles a gasp at your appearance.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” she admits. You want to laugh. You are nothing if not a flutterbeast to her flame.

“Oh, what a life you will lead,” you tell her. “And all for nothing. All for decay and dust.” She narrows her eyes and steps closer.

“What do you want, Demoness?”

You kiss her for the last time. She startles, but she is receptive. You both draw blood. When she pulls back she is grinning, or perhaps it would be better to say snarling. 

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” You know she’s had kismeses before you, but she still has the manner of a six-sweep-old with their first hate. You ache; you burn.

“I’m Damara,” you say, impulsively, you say because you know you have to. You turn to leave and she catches your arm. 

“Wait,” she says. “You have to go so soon?”

For once she is the one who will outlive you. It’s refreshing. You smile as you begin to disappear.

“See you later,” she calls, hopeful to the very last. 

-

"Oh _not_ because hatred _exists_ ,  
That too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here  
apparently needs us, this floating world, which in some strange way   
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

...Ah, but what can we take along  
into that other realm? Not the art of glaring,   
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.  
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,   
and the long experience of loathing,--just what is wholly unsayable."

-Troll Rainer Maria Rilke

**Author's Note:**

> I knew immediately which work I wanted to remix, for two reasons: number one is that I wanted to write some caliginous romance, number two is that I have read The Time Traveler's Wife way too many times and that knowledge has to be useful for something. It's not a great book, but I love the idea of a looping and circuitous romance, and the Handmaid and the Dolorosa seemed perfect for that.
> 
> The original work has a great blurb that says "[...] the thing the Demoness would hate most isn't casual entitlement. It's hope." I hope you can tell how much that inspired me here. 
> 
> Oh, and the quotations are from The Time Traveler's Wife (though with a little modification), because like I said this is the only time this knowledge will ever be useful to me. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
